Thursday, 4 September 2008

Today I've been mainly decanting all the notes, story ideas, scraps of conversation and other flotsam I've had over the past few weeks onto computer. I carry a notebook around for making these stray jottings, as many writers do, but then I have to transpose them onto computer to use them.

I'm not one of those writers who uses paper much. I don't begin to understand how you can write anything of any length without using a word processor. Obviously many great books have been written without the help of a computer but using paper for a large work just seems so clumsy. Some writers say they find the words flow more freely with a pencil than with a keyboard but, for me, the keyboard feels far more comfortable. Perhaps it's my twenty-plus years at the code face, working as a software developer. Anyway, the task of decanting notes onto the screen is just something that has to be done. And it is useful : I always edit and revise as I go.

I also submitted a previously-completed short story called Flotsam to a magazine called Serendipity. This short story is fairly impressionistic and perhaps rather experimental, but it has some imagery in it I do like. It's the sort of thing that reads like it was made up whilst half-awake in the middle of the night - which indeed it was. Serendipity are a magic realism magazine so it should be a good fit. We shall see ...